Wanna know why many teachers love using Boom learning cards in their lessons? It’s not that hard to imagine after you hear me out, I promise. In the last year I’ve absolutely fallen in love with using BOOM cards for my ESL lessons! I’d seen many teachers online using them and making them, and they looked so beautiful (I’m a sucker for pretty resources), and I thought they’d be super hard to make. Well, little did I know.. I will tell you 5 reasons why I love Boom learning cards.
If you don’t want to wait that long, go check a deck of cards out for yourself, for free! Click here to find my free deck about the English words for shapes.
BOOM cards are super easy to make
Once you’ve signed up to create BOOM decks, the platform shows you a tutorial, which is super easy to follow, about how to make them. You can easily create your own questions and answer possibilities and with the level of your students in mind. All this in just a few clicks. I love them for vocabulary study, for grammar practice, and even reading and listening skills could be practiced through these cards! Whatever you want on them, you can upload it to the platform, or drag it onto the cards.
They are self-checking and self-grading
You don’t have to do any checking, the platform does this for you! It knows the correct answers to cards, and students may only advance to the next card if they’ve chosen the correct answer. If they haven’t, it will give them an ‘OOPS’ and lets them try again. This way, students can see what their mistake was and correct their error. In that sense, it’s also self-grading so you can even use these cards as a quiz. An added bonus for this is that cards are usually given to students in randomized order. This means that no two students will get the exact ‘same’ deck.
They are super engaging
BOOM cards are like games, and they are presented in that way. Students get an ‘OOPS’ and a cross on the wrong answer if they make a mistake, and a ‘DING’ if they were right. It’s designed to make students feel triumphant. In addition, the cards look really pretty, colorful, and sophisticated, so students will think they’re dealing with a high-end product. Before long, your students will beg to get more BOOM cards! Other teachers have made beautiful decks for you to use. But even if you make them yourself, BOOM sets you up for success and your own decks will look amazing too.
They are great for distance learning
How to use boom cards in Google Classroom you ask? You can easily assign these cards to your students via the BOOM Learning website, but you can also do it via Google Classroom. Post the link in a message on the Stream, or even as an Assignment in the text box or the special link box that is available. Whatever suits you and your students best. I just post them straight in the message box on the Stream. Students can then click the link and complete the deck of BOOM cards via PC or hand-held device. This way, you can assess your students’ learning even when they’re not in the classroom.
BOOM cards fulfill all your needs
BOOM lets you choose the way you need your students to answer a given question. You have the option to choose multiple choice, fill the blanks, choose the correct answer, or drag and drop answers. The possibilities are endless. They all fit a specific purpose, and you can even adjust the level of difficulty of cards by using certain answer possibilities over others. For example, if I want my students to pick from various answer possibilities, but they don’t have to come up with the answer themselves, I will use the multiple choice option. But if I want them to think for themselves and access the knowledge they should have at the ready, then I will choose the fill in option.
Use BOOM cards free of charge
You do have to create an account in order to use BOOM! But you can keep this account free if you don’t need to see any stats of individual students. With a free account, you can only have 5 students in your ‘class’. So seeing statistics is only limited to those five students. Using that account, you can only make 5 decks for your students. This may be enough for you, or you might want to delete those decks that you’ve already used in order to create new ones. Another option is getting decks from other teachers that are 0 points in the store. There are a number of options to keep BOOM cards free.
However, there are a great number of amazing decks out there made by our wonderful colleagues! And you may want to check those out too. My own BOOM decks can be found HERE and I have done decks on a variety of grammar and vocabulary subjects. I have decks for quite a lot of topics already, and intend to make more in the near future (as I said, I’ve fallen in love with them ;-)) So check out my BOOM learning store!
Wanna find out exactly how to use Boom cards in your lessons? Check out this blog post!
Or do you wanna learn HOW to make them? Check out this super fun course by my friend Anna!
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